Sara Raza: Curating as Poetic Rebellion
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In today’s art world, where aesthetics often intersect with politics, history, and mysticism, Sara Raza has emerged as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary curatorial practice. Born in London to Azerbaijani and Iranian heritage, her work exists in the space between East and West, between archive and disruption, between theory and lived experience.
✨ A Gaze Beyond the Canon
Raza has worked within the world’s most prestigious art institutions—including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, and Asia Society—but always with a mission to redefine dominant narratives. Her curatorial practice focuses on artists and regions often overlooked by the Western-centric art world: Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and their diasporas.
Rather than asking art to "explain" these cultures to the West, Raza insists that art is a language in itself—complex, layered, and capable of holding its own context and voice without the need for translation or simplification.
💥 Curating as a Political Act
One of her most celebrated projects, “But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise” (Guggenheim, 2016), explored the work of contemporary artists from the Middle East responding to themes of borders, memory, trauma, and displacement. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s writings, the exhibition acted as a poetic lens through which to view history as both storm and movement.
For Raza, curating is never neutral. Each exhibition is a construction of thought, a carefully orchestrated discourse where curation becomes cultural theory in motion.
✍️ Writer, Thinker, Rebel
Beyond the gallery, Sara Raza is a prolific writer and cultural critic. Her essays have been published in ArtReview, ArtAsiaPacific, Ibraaz, Hyperallergic, and many other vital platforms in the global arts dialogue. In her writing, she challenges simplistic labels like “Islamic contemporary art,” critiques institutional orientalism, and calls for a decolonial, poetic, and context-rich approach to global art narratives.
In 2022, she published her book:
Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion—an exploration of post-Soviet artistic resistance in Central Asia. (Stay tuned: we’ll be publishing a review of this work soon.)
🌐 In Resonance with GONA Gallery
At GONA Gallery, where we believe art should spark reflection, emotion, and social awareness, Sara Raza’s practice inspires us deeply. She reminds us that curating is not just about selecting—it’s about questioning, reimagining, and holding space for voices that refuse simplification.
Her work encourages us to look again, to look deeper, and to honor complexity. It’s a form of slow, radical seeing—something we hope to cultivate in every project we present.
📚 Coming soon: Review of her book "Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion"
📍 GONA Gallery — Nosara, Costa Rica
🔗 Follow us on Instagram: @gona.gallery
No works available for this artist.